Tirana Hassan, a lawyer and veteran human rights investigator of Pakistanorigin, has been appointed the new executive director of the Human RightsWatch, as per the organisation’s announcement.
Hassan is known for documenting rights abuses in global crises andconflicts as chief programmes officer at the Human Rights Watch. She wasmade the acting executive director in September 2022 after the exit ofKenneth Roth.
“As new executive director of Human Rights Watch, Tirana Hassan bringsimpeccable credentials as a human rights practitioner and an ambitiousvision for human rights solutions to the challenges the world is facing,”said Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, CEO and president of the International PeaceInstitute and the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Born in Singapore to a Pakistani father and a Malaysian-born Sri Lankan andChinese mother, Hassan’s family resettled in Australia in the 1970s afterher father’s academic research on Singapore’s housing policies offended thegovernment.
Traveling from one country to another, Hassan said that family stories ofracism, prejudice, and repression shaped her views and drove her to workfor the rights of dispossessed people.
The multi-talented lawyer holds degrees from the University of SouthAustralia, University of Adelaide, and Oxford University. She first joinedHuman Rights Watch in 2010, covering Africa, Asia and the Middle East.Hassan then became Amnesty International’s director of crisis.
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“Tirana has the rare combination of wide-ranging investigative experience,strategic creativity, and a deep commitment to human rights principle thatHuman Rights Watch needs to tackle the complex human rights challenges theworld is facing,” said Kenneth Roth, former executive director at HumanRights Watch, who stepped down in August 2022.
When she overlooked Amnesty International’s crisis team, Hassan headed thedevelopment of innovative uses of technology to advance human rightsinvestigations in Myanmar, Syria and other crisis areas.
“Tirana brings a powerful vision of innovation to this role – one thatmerges tried and true reporting methods with new and emergingtechnologies,” said Brad Samuels, director at SITU Research, a visualinvestigations practice that has worked with Human Rights Watch on severalprojects.